EU Council

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that it is quite acceptable for the EU to want to recalculate the basis for calculating gross national income? However, why does this tax have to become retrospective? Can she explain to us why this has to be a retrospective exercise? Why is it not just being taken forward from here, if we get the agreement of Ministers, with the tax applying in the future, not the past?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend has highlighted one of the issues that we have to explore in greater detail in the process of talks that will start in the emergency discussions between Finance Ministers later next week.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I joined my noble friend Lord Jopling’s Whips’ Office in 1982. The highlight of our year was when the Prime Minister came to have dinner with us, which normally ended with a question and answer session when her praetorian guards of Whips were treated rather like backsliding leftists. However, it was always a very invigorating occasion. It was a great honour for us when she then suggested that she might return the favour and that we might come with our wives to have lunch at Chequers. Unfortunately, that never happened because the Brighton bomb came in between, so instead dinner was laid on in Downing Street for both the Lords and the Commons Whips.

That meal ended in the same way, with the Prime Minister saying, “Right, does anybody have any problems or concerns they would like to raise?”. I remember that my noble friend Lady Trumpington asked the first question, about pensions. She got slapped down pretty swiftly, and then John Major, who was the Treasury Whip, piped up and said, “Prime Minister, there is deep concern in the country on the following issues”. She went for him such as I have never seen. A row erupted of such seriousness that it ended on a very sour note. At one stage, we thought that John Major might even walk out of the room, and we were very concerned that he may have completely destroyed his political career. As we walked from the dining room to the drawing room in Downing Street, Denis Thatcher came up to him and said, “Don’t worry, dear boy, she gets like this sometimes”. The next day, she reconciled the position with John Major, and three months later he was a junior Minister in her Government. That story is becoming better known and is very significant, because it indicates the sort of woman that she was. She loved the row but never had any feelings of bitterness. She respected people who stood up to her and never held it against anybody at all.

I came to get to know her much better in 1987, when I was made her PPS. If I am brutally frank, I was not terribly good at the job. I did very badly when Alan Clark came to see her as Minister of Trade, and I totally failed to tell the Prime Minister something. I do not think she was aware that Alan Clark always rather prided himself on having two attributes of Adolf Hitler, namely that he was a vegetarian and hated foxhunting. His pitch to the Prime Minister was that he considered it a very good idea if labels were to be put on furs saying, “The fur being sold here has been caught in an extremely inhumane trap”. It would have been rather like having a health warning on cigarettes. The Prime Minister was absolutely appalled by this and said, “Alan, what on earth makes you so concerned to do this?”. He said, “Prime Minister, didn’t you know that I’m a vegetarian?”. She looked at him and said, “But Alan, you are wearing leather shoes”. He drawled, “I do not think you expect your Ministers to wear plastic shoes, Prime Minister”. Needless to say, the pleas got nowhere because the calculation that Alan Clark had not made was that because the Prime Minister was MP for Finchley, many of her Jewish constituents were furriers and the last thing she was going to do was ruin their business.

She was very interesting. She never read the daily papers. I remember taking that up with her at one stage and asking why she did not. Every morning in Downing Street, we used to get the most wonderful summary of absolutely everything that was in the daily papers from Bernard Ingham’s press department. I would give my eye teeth to get hold of that today; it was a brilliant piece of work. However, she used to say, “I never read the daily papers because they write such harmful and personal abuse about me and my family that I could never get the job done that I have to do”. Later, when John Major was Prime Minister and having his problems with the media, I raised this with him. I said that she had never actually read the daily papers, and he looked at me as if I had gone slightly weak in the head. Certainly, part of her thing in life was that you have to do the job you are faced with and that it really was not good enough to be reading the papers every day, or you just could not get on with what needed to be done.

I always remember a meeting, held at Downing Street at five o’clock in the evening, to discuss a policy paper. I thought that it would all go quite calmly; I knew that the Cabinet Minister who was presenting the paper was a friend and somebody she supported. He had no opportunity to present his paper as such. She launched into him and said, “It strikes me that the problems with this are the following”, and so forth, and another furious argument took place, leaving us all looking at our feet and wondering, “Goodness, where is all this going to go?”. She always kept to the timescale, which was half an hour for the meeting. We were coming to the end, and she summed up by saying, “Of course, I agree with absolutely everything you are trying to do here. I just thought I’d play devil’s advocate and make sure that you’d thought out all the arguments”. That is just one of the reasons why she was a very great Prime Minister.

As the leader of the Conservatives she was always terribly bored that the socialists had something called “Socialist International”. She thought that this gave a lot of respectability to left-wing parties, and she could not quite understand why the Conservatives should not have the same thing. She was, therefore, very much party to setting up something called the European Democrat Union, which later moved on to be the International Democrat Union. Although she never took me, as her PPS, on foreign trips, this was a party political occasion, because the IDU meeting was being chaired by Chancellor Kohl. We sat in the most enormous room in the Reichstag building—this was, of course, before the wall came down—and Chancellor Kohl gave a speech to welcome everybody that I strongly suspect was written by somebody else. She just made a few short notes, and when it came to her opportunity to speak she pointed through the window and said, “People tell me that the building that we can see over the Berlin Wall, out through this window, is the headquarters of the East German intelligence service. People also say to me that they are probably listening to every word we are saying here today, in which case I would like them to know—”, and she then went into a great tirade about how freedom was what we were all fighting for, and that freedom would conquer in the end. How right she was; the wall came down not very much later.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford alluded to the fact that she was brought up as a Methodist, but she was always very much an adopted member of the Church of England. When I was sitting with her in the House of Commons, waiting to vote late in the evening, she was going on about the worrying question of women priests. She said that she did not think that there should be women priests in the Church of England because she thought it would split the Church of England. I took issue with her and said, “I don’t think, Prime Minister, that as a woman Prime Minister you can really take objection to women becoming priests. Anyway, I don’t know what you’re so worried about; I think women are capable of greater spirituality than men, and they are also less prone to sexual temptation”. “Oh, I don’t know about that!” she said. As always with Margaret Thatcher, she never agreed that you had won the argument, but some weeks later Bernard Ingham would put out a very small press release, saying, “Thatcher backs women priests”, and so forth. So she came round in the end.

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, referred to the fact that she could survive on three or four hours’ sleep. I had to spend quite a bit of my time travelling in an armour-plated Daimler, whose roof was of course lowered to make it more bomb-proof. It had a very inadequate air-conditioning system, and we usually had very large policemen and drivers sitting in front. The heat used to accumulate massively, and I have to say that both she and I used to nod off quite regularly. It became rather embarrassing when my wife went around saying, “Archie spends much of his time sleeping with the Prime Minister in the back of her car”.

Margaret Thatcher first came to stay with me in the country shortly after she stood down, in January 1991. It was interesting. We were sitting there in the evening and the telephone rang. It was John Major ringing her up to say that the hostilities were about to begin in the Gulf. Needless to say, she stayed up the whole night listening to the wireless to hear what was going on. I was Minister for the Armed Forces but went to bed and listened to the news the next morning. That might be one of the reasons why she was Prime Minister and I never was. It was an indication of her extraordinary determination to be involved, and, of course, it was a war that she had been very much involved with in the beginning.

The Thatchers came to stay with us quite regularly from that moment. We even had them to stay twice for Christmas. Shortly after Denis died, she came to stay with us down in Devon. At that stage, she still thought that Denis was alive. There was a period of her life, which was quite short, I think, when she was not really reconciled to the fact that he had died. It is regrettable that so much of that film, “The Iron Lady”, should have been on the period in her life when she thought that her husband was still with us. She was never really the same again after he died. It knocked her very hard. He was a great companion to her and life was extremely difficult for her from that moment on.

She was a very great lady. She was an evangelist. She was not like most modern politicians. She had a mission. But everything that she stood for will survive her. From my point of view, it has been a very great privilege to have served with her and to have served in her Government.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

As an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out from “that” to the end and insert “the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House”.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I have been on a pretty steep learning curve about the procedures of the House since last Monday. When the Motion to put the whole Committee stage of the Financial Services Bill into Grand Committee was withdrawn I imagined that the will of the House would be respected, that that would be the last we heard of it and that there would be no question of our now having to talk about some compromise on all this—namely that the Bill should be split, with some of it debated in Grand Committee and some on the Floor of the House.

Therefore, I talked to the Clerk of the Parliaments about it, realising that perhaps I did not totally understand. He explained that when the Government withdrew the Motion, it did not mean that they could not bring back another. I said, “What should I have done about the Motion that was put down originally?”. The Clerk said that that Motion should have been amended; it could have been amended at the last minute by a manuscript amendment, but he said that that was not much approved of in this House. However, I am afraid that that is what I have been forced to do today for the simple reason that the Motion was tabled on Friday, when the House was not even sitting. There has been no opportunity to table a proper amendment to it; it has to be a manuscript amendment. I apologise to the House for that but I did not see that I had an alternative.

I reiterate: we are talking about the Financial Services Bill. It is a major piece of legislation which has been drafted to reorganise our financial institutions completely and regulate them properly. I do not think that the people of this country would understand it if we were to put any part of this Bill in Grand Committee. This extremely important legislation needs very serious consideration by your Lordships. As well as that, this Bill brings out the best of your Lordships’ House. There is a tremendous amount of expertise here which needs to be brought to the fore. That can be done much better if the whole of Committee stage is debated on the Floor of the House.

I ask the House to consider seriously whether any of this Bill should be committed to a Grand Committee. As a noble friend said to me earlier, if we do not discuss the Committee stage of the Bill on the Floor of the House, which other Bills will we consider on the Floor of the House? It seems that the Government have a desire to put everything into Grand Committee. It is for us to stand up against that and say, “No, we want the whole of this very important Bill to be considered on the Floor of the House”. I hope that the House will support my amendment.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, we have before us a very important matter. As the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, has said, how we regulate our financial services and the financial services sector is vital to economic and financial stability. What our banks do and how they do it is important for the prospects for growth and employment in this country.

We on these Benches had not seen the terms of these Motions before today and we certainly had not agreed to them in the usual channels. I had a private meeting with the Leader of the House on Wednesday morning at which we discussed this matter and I told him in all honesty that I could not agree to the terms of the Motion, that I needed to have further consultations and discussions with my colleagues and that I would come back to him and the usual channels in due course. That I did first thing on Thursday morning, since when we have heard nothing about the Motion before us today. As for the Opposition’s role on this Bill within the usual channels, I wrote to the Leader of the House this morning, once we had seen the terms of the Motion before us. I would be happy to provide noble Lords with a copy of that letter.

My concern, much more than accusations from the Leader and the ins-and-outs of the usual channels, is what Members of this House want. When the Government tried to put the whole of the Bill in Grand Committee a week ago today I thought that the statements made by Members from across the whole of this House made clear what the majority of them wanted. At a very late hour, during that debate on the Floor of this Chamber, Members made it abundantly clear that they wanted the whole of the Bill to be considered by a Committee of the whole House. What Members of the House were telling the Government was clear.

Last Tuesday I had discussions with the Government about splitting the Bill and taking some parts on the Floor of the House and some in Grand Committee. I could see some merit in that approach, which is why we were prepared to consider it constructively in discussions within the usual channels. Yes we discussed it, but no we did not agree on it—precisely because I had to have discussions with my colleagues on the Benches behind me, which is the right and proper thing to do. In any case, we would not have agreed to the split that the Government now propose. Neither would we have agreed to only three days in a Committee of the whole House. We do not think that that split works. We also think that it was wrong not to include Part 4, on the mechanisms to deal with current issues, for consideration by a Committee of the whole House.

This House is self-regulating and on matters such as this it is for this House, and this House alone, to decide what it wishes to do. From our soundings, most Members on the Benches behind me want the Bill to be considered by a Committee of the whole House, which is what I believe many Members from all across the House want to see. That is precisely what the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, proposes.

I therefore look forward to this House, not the Government, deciding what it wants to do. From these Benches, we do not believe that the Government’s proposal is the right approach. We believe that the House should reject it and accept the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I hope that the Government will listen to the House when it makes its decision today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

I urge the noble Baroness to read the record of the debates that we had at the time. If she can find the evidence for that, of course I will withdraw everything that I have said about Grand Committees. I assure her that when I was Leader of the Opposition, we understood perfectly well that Grand Committees were for all or any Bills, and that only constitutional Bills would sit on the Floor of the House.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I share the concern of many Members of this House about all these massive Bills that will come through in the future to be debated on the Floor of the House. I am not at all sure what they are, but I know that one of them will not be the Civil Aviation Bill because that will be going into Grand Committee when this business has been dealt with.

I very much take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that this is a thin parliamentary Session and that for a Bill of this importance to be shoved into the Grand Committee Room would be absolutely wrong. It will not be understood by the people of this country. It is a major Bill of great significance. I do not accept the view of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, that somehow these issues are better debated in the Grand Committee Room. I think that the place to debate them is on the Floor of the House. I suspect that the debate would go on much longer on the Floor of the House, but that would improve the Bill at the end of the day and would be for the good all round. It is critical that the Financial Services Bill is got right by your Lordships’ House, and I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House on my amendment.

Procedure of the House (Proposal 1)

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

We do not have a Lord Chancellor; we now have an independent Lord Speaker. I am arguing that we should take that role away from the political and give it to the independent Chair of our proceedings, thereby enabling early intervention in a House which, during Question Time, is often unruly, and which has led to public criticism when people see adults on television standing screaming, shouting and bawling at each other across the Floor of the House. Anyone in this House who can claim that that is a dignified spectacle misunderstands what is expected of this House.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I am absolutely staggered that any Member of this House who has served in the other place—or the House of Commons, I am pretty agnostic on what we call it—should be advocating greater authority for our Speaker. I fear that I do not remember the halcyon days of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. I remember her authority being constantly challenged on totally bogus points of order. You have only to pick up a Hansard from yesterday, which will be like any other Hansard from the House of Commons. It will show that after every Question Time, people leap to their feet with points of order which are not points of order. They are people who missed out on Questions—they have not managed to get in, so they ask their question anyway—or they bring up some constituency matter that happens to concern them. That is all completely bogus. The authority of the Speaker is constantly challenged in the House of Commons, and it will be challenged here if we give authority to our Lord Speaker. We do not want to go down that path; it is a very retrograde step. We should learn from the House of Commons and stay with a system that works very satisfactorily as it is.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am finding this a very strange debate indeed. I always thought that when we had a Leader’s Group, the Leader of the House was on the group and presented the report to the House. Then it went back to the Procedure Committee. The Procedure Committee then went through the report and then presented its report with recommendations which it unanimously backed. We knew precisely where we stood then and had very strong leadership. Times change, and the report has been presented today in a very different way, in a neutral fashion. I have been waiting to see who will speak on behalf of whom in defending the current position or advocating change. It looks as if we have a new style of neutrality, which we have not had before. In those circumstances—and I say this as someone who saw the House regulating itself well when I first came in, with civility, courtesy and discipline; and no doubt I am now as much part of it as anyone else—it has changed. We should recognise that we have changed, and move on. I have again heard criticism of the Leader today, saying that he does not intervene in the way that Leaders intervened in the past. I am moving then to say that I am going with the change, and I am hard pressed on this. I do not like the state that we have got ourselves into, and therefore if changes come, I have got to go with them—unless, of course, somebody will stand up firmly and say “No, we are stopping it. We are going back to what it was like before, and I am the individual who will ensure that that happens”. I do not know who that individual is in the House, and who is going to say it. But the question I pose to the Leader is: is he going to speak this afternoon?

House of Lords: Reform

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

It is all a question of time. I dare say that if we rushed through the welfare Bill, the Localism Bill and the health Bill, and found ourselves with a few extra days at the end of the Session, we might be able to look at this more constructively. However, given the pace at which we have approached government legislation this Session, I do not think that we will have that extra time.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, would my noble friend the Leader accept an amendment to the Steel Bill that put a cap on the number of Members of your Lordships’ House at, say, 800?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Steel’s Bill is before the House. It has had its Second Reading and awaits a Committee stage. If my noble friend Lord Hamilton were to table an amendment, I am sure that it would be debated if the Committee stage came forward. I have no idea what the Government’s view on that would be, nor indeed what the House’s view would be.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I remember the words of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, in an earlier debate when he said, “If it’s not broke, don’t break it”. That seems to fit most of the prejudices with which I approach politics. But I think we should look again at the question of voting on Thursdays. That was set up in an age when people did not move very much. We are now dealing with a much more mobile population and people who travel all over the country. How many of us have canvassed on election day, knocking on doors to find that somebody has travelled the length of the country and is sitting in some city a very long way away from where they can vote? There are arguments for moving the date of an election to the weekend because it is much more likely that people would then be at home. This is something that needs consideration. As the noble Lord, Lord Snape, pointed out, the Europeans on the whole vote on Sundays and that seems to be eminently sensible. This has a degree of merit and should be seriously considered because the habits of people are changing.

A noble friend said to me when I was considering supporting this amendment that we now have postal voting and so therefore this becomes less of a problem. I am not certain about that. Postal voting has opened up enormous opportunities for fraud and it seems to be possible to create electors in inordinately large numbers who do not actually exist. There is something to be said for restraining the growth in postal voting and possibly considering moving the election day to the weekend when there will be more people at home and in a position to vote.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, on this and to support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Snape. Both noble Lords are right to draw attention to the fact that in the past there has been a great flexibility on election day and the changing circumstances of the British people now suggest that we ought to be looking at this again. That is why the previous Government held a consultation on this issue. That consultation, for which I was the Minister responsible, proved a very interesting one. There was a mixed response, as one would expect. There were a lot of voices in favour of moving election day. There were equally, I think it is fair to say, a lot of voices very much opposed to it. But what it showed was that there are a great number of issues that have to be taken into account on this: participation in elections, which is a fundamental of our democracy, questions of faith, the patterns of the working day for the great majority of the British electorate and the cost of shifting the election day.

These are complex issues. In the end the previous Government took the view that it was right that the British people should have a decisive say in that. It is their democracy. It is not for us but for them to decide what day would be most convenient, bearing in mind all those other considerations that both noble Lords have alluded to and which the consultation highlighted. We thought in Government that the best way of allowing the British people to have their say was through a citizens’ summit, as my noble friend Lord Snape has reminded us. I still think that probably is the best way but I realise that that is not on offer from the Government. I regret that, but we have a unique opportunity with a referendum. It is the next best thing and I urge the Government to consider this. Both noble Lords have made powerful cases for the consideration of this. It is not a question of deciding to shift it from Thursday. This is really about giving the British people the right to decide. I have heard the Leader of the House say many times that the British people are wise and sagacious enough to make these decisions for themselves. Those on both sides of the debate will put their arguments forward but then the British people in their wisdom will decide. He has said that many times in our debates on this Bill already so I urge him to follow his own logic and accept the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Snape and at least put it to the British people to decide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I am always struck by the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Snape, but what might happen in such a constituency—not his former constituency, of course: nor, I hope, in mine—if the majority of people who performed their democratic function of going to the polling station wrote on the ballot paper, “None of the above”.?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart: and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on his previous interventions. We are greatly reluctant about compulsory voting, which has to be right. People have to have the option of not voting at all. I am afraid that on this issue I am not with the noble Lord, Lord Snape, as I was on his previous amendment, but I was rather attracted by his suggestion of incentives to vote, rather than doing what the Australians always purport to do, which is to fine people who do not vote. I do not quite know how many Australians get fined for not voting, but I suspect that it is not a very efficient system.

However, an incentive to enable people to vote strikes me as rather attractive. An incentive that takes the form of, say, a voucher to knock something off your rates or something of that sort, which you are given in the polling station, would encourage people to vote in person. That would get us away from the problem of the growing number of postal votes and all the fraud involved in that, which was alluded to in an earlier discussion.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I shall not repeat my earlier points about whether it should be included in the Bill, which I will take as given. I will briefly address the substance of the argument. I acknowledge that there are quite substantial arguments for compulsory voting, but my view is very much along the lines advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. Voting should be regarded as a civic duty. It should not be a statutory obligation. If people do not wish to vote, we should not force them to vote. I am also a bit wary of the argument that is sometimes used in favour of compulsory voting: that there is an increasing disaffection with politics, which is why people are not voting, so there should be compulsory voting.

I do not find particularly attractive the argument that we should say to people, “Look, you are being put off politics, therefore we are going to force you to vote”. That would increase their disaffection rather than ameliorate it. I do not find the argument persuasive, although I accept that there are arguments on the other side. I rather warm to the thinking advanced about incentives to get people to the polling station. That is well worth exploring, but with the obvious proviso of “not in this Bill”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I failed to contribute to the Second Reading debate on this Bill and have not had the opportunity to spell out the reasons why I am so deeply unhappy about Part 1. Unlike the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Lipsey, I do not believe in any form of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system has served us extremely well. I do not think that we should move away from it. The problem is that if you believe in any form of proportional representation, you have to believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in coalition government. I know that we have such a Government, but I do not think that that is an overwhelming reason to change the electoral system, which would make it more likely that we would have coalition government in perpetuity.

Surely, the problems of coalition government are being pointed out very well. For example, one could think of the problems that the Liberal Democrats have on the whole question of student fees. The press say to the Liberal Democrats, “Ah, it was a commitment in your manifesto that you would stop student fees rising. Why aren’t you voting against the rises in student fees?”. But the whole point of coalition government is that the coalition partners bin all their manifesto commitments. That is what comes from coalition government. You end up not with any precise party that you voted for with its commitments in its manifesto; you end up with a mish-mash and certain commitments are dropped. I as a Conservative am rather unhappy that the coalition Government seem to have dropped all the commitments that we had in opposition. I think I remember the Prime Minister saying when he was in opposition that he regarded reform of your Lordships’ House as a third-Parliament issue. Now we have reform of the House of Lords trundling down the road as fast as it can be organised.

[Lord Garel-Jones]

Would my noble friend be prepared to go a little further and say that one of the inevitable consequences of a fully proportional system is that the Government and the programme that emerges thereafter is, by definition, a programme that no one has voted for?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I totally agree with my noble friend. Indeed, you could argue that the coalition agreement drawn up immediately after the election was something that no one voted for. I thought that the Conservative commitment was to repatriating powers from Europe, but nothing much seems to have happened on that front, and I thought that we were going to repeal human rights legislation. A number of things have gone from the Conservative manifesto. I am rather surprised that the Liberal Democrats have been attacked in the way that they have been for binning commitments in their manifesto. That comes with coalition. If the country votes for coalition, which basically is what it has done, it must expect to end up with a Government who produce a number of policies for which no one has voted. That is why I am extremely unhappy about changing our electoral system to make coalition government more likely.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I agree absolutely with the noble Lord that coalitions are likely to arise almost inevitably from a proportional system. But I was interested to hear what he said about the coalition. In the light of his remarks, does he agree that what is happening is that the tail is wagging the dog?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Indeed, that is another argument. I have been agreeably surprised by the achievements of this coalition Government in terms of the fact that they seem to have grasped many issues, such as welfare reform and reforms in education which former Prime Minister Tony Blair used to dream about and which have been long overdue. I am a great supporter of much of what the coalition is doing, but that does not mean that I want to see coalition governments in perpetuity from hereon.

I was very interested in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about the YouGov poll on the alternative vote. In fact, there was a bare majority from a completely ill informed electorate—in fact, there was a no vote by 1 per cent. But when the implications of the alternative vote were spelt out a 33 per cent no vote went up to 38 per cent. I would say to any Conservative that that is very significant indeed. If you have time to explain to people how perfectly ghastly the alternative vote is, the chances of defeating it are greater. Under this Bill, however, we are insisting on cramming the referendum together with the local elections, a point we debated earlier on in this clause.

It worries me tremendously that, if we are not careful, this thing will get muddled through with the local elections. The issues will not be debated properly in the country because people will be much more concerned about whether they are winning or losing in the local elections, and they are not going to come to understand the appalling difficulties that the whole business of an alternative vote brings into the argument. I am deeply apprehensive about it. I keep hearing from people on my side of the House that they support the Bill and think it is a frightfully good idea. They all say, “Don’t worry. We are going to defeat it in the referendum”. But I notice that a lot of them are the same people who told me that we would get a commanding and overall majority at the general election.

None of us knows what the outcome of any referendum will be. It cannot be forecast with any accuracy because many other factors come into play. I do not have that deep feeling of assurance that we are going to defeat the idea of an alternative vote without any difficulty. Things could very easily go wrong, and if they do, I believe that it will put the Conservative Party at a permanent disadvantage.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, the arguments about AV, SV and STV are fascinating arguments that embrace ethics, philosophy and, one might almost say, theology. But the House will be relieved to hear that what I want to raise is a very limited point which I need only mention in limine, as it were. It relates to the Welsh translation of the question that will be put on the AV ballot paper. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and I have already raised this matter with the department, but it seems that it may be too late for anything to be done about it. The reason, as I understand it, is that time is of the essence and that it would involve a long exercise in ping-pong between the Electoral Commission, the Welsh Language Board and possibly other bodies which might take many months. Possibly that is the reason why the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, did not go any further than it did.

Be that as it may, perhaps I may point out that the translation that appears in the Bill is one that it would be wholly impossible for the ordinary, intelligent Welsh speaker to understand. I do not doubt that a panel of distinguished academics could justify many parts of it, but in total it is as obscure as ancient Sanskrit to anyone who speaks Welsh from day to day. I speak as one of the half a dozen Members of this House for whom Welsh is their first language, and I must say that it beats me that anyone could have arrived at such an agglomeration of so many different facets.

First, the term, “the UK” is perfectly understandable to anyone living in the United Kingdom, the full term in Welsh, “Deyrnas Unedig”, is also well understood, but the initials “DU” have no meaning whatever. “Duw” means “almighty God” in Welsh. I am sure that many people will wonder why there is a reference to the Almighty in this translation. The next matter is the first past the post system, which is referred to in the English version. Whether there is an aversion to taking a reference from the field of horse racing, I know not. It may be something that Non-Conformists would reject totally as a matter of instinct. But in Welsh it reads as, “y cyntaf i’r felin”. There is a saying in Welsh,

“Y cyntaf i’r felin gaeth falu”.

My noble friend opposite is nodding his head. It means, “The first to the mill shall grind”. If one wanted to translate that back into English, one might say something like, “The early bird catches the worm”, which would be more understandable. But it has nothing at all to do with first past the post. Someone looking at the English version might ask, “What has this to do with mills and grinding?”.

Then we have, “pleidlais amgen”, which translates to “the alternative vote”. I am no grammarian, but I think I am right in saying that the word “amgen” came into the Welsh language 20 or 30 years ago. Strictly it means “an alternative”, but it came into the language in the context of alternative energy, “ynni amgen”. Again, people will ask, “What has this to do with energy?”.

The totality of this is utterly grotesque and impossible. It may be that nothing can be done about it, but it does no great service to the Welsh language, it does no great service to those whose first language is Welsh, and indeed it is less than worthy of whoever was responsible for the drafting of this part of the Bill.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

As was pointed out only a few minutes ago, the noble Lord was very selective in the ones that he quoted, and 25 per cent is not a bad turnout in a local election. I would argue that AV is not perfect and I have never said it is perfect, but I believe it has real advantages in terms of the relationship between the elected Member and his or her constituency. In that respect, in many ways it has advantages over a pure proportional representation system. Incidentally, my noble friend Lord Hamilton was utterly wrong in describing anything in the Bill now as a proportional system. It is not. Some of us might think that in due course there may be a proportional system, but this is not a proportional system and I would never claim that it is. If his opposition to AV is based on that, I am afraid he is deluded.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Does my noble friend accept that if we move to an AV system, we are more likely to have coalition governments and, if we have coalition governments, we have coalition agreements, such as we had at the beginning of this Parliament, and we end up with a government who are governing with a new manifesto that is only vaguely related to the two manifestos of the parties in the coalition?

[Lord Tyler]

All the evidence from Professor John Curtice, who was mentioned earlier, is that AV is less likely to result in a balanced Parliament, as we have now, than first past the post. The noble Lord may be able to look to the future and have a better idea, but the academic evidence is that AV is less likely to do that because there is a sort of bonus towards the larger party as a result of the election.

I find it incredible that so many Members opposite are ignoring what has been said by their party leader—and in the Guardian today—by saying in absolutely firm terms that they believe that AV is the right way forward. Of course, they are being consistent with what they said previously in Parliament and in the election, but I find it quite extraordinary that so many Members opposite feel that it is necessary to rebel against their own party at this juncture and to weaken the position of their new leader.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I will speak only very briefly on this. Being one of the newest Members of this House, I have yet to have a general election where I have not been able to vote. I have to say that I am very grateful to the new coalition Government for having announced some more Peers because, shortly, I will not be one of the newest Members of the House, which I look forward to greatly.

The question that I pose is slightly less about voting in general elections than about giving Peers the vote in the referendum. Two groups cannot vote in general elections: Members of this House and European Union citizens from other member states, who can vote in our local and European elections. I am particularly interested to know why one group of people who are excluded from parliamentary votes have been given the right to vote in the referendum, whereas another group—those European citizens who appear on our electoral register—have not been given the right to vote in the referendum.

Obviously there are some Members of this House who are great experts on AV and other systems. I am not. I am an anorak on other things but, your Lordships will be pleased to know, not on this one. The people who really understand different electoral systems, however, are European citizens living in our country and voting in our European and local government elections, who have enormous experience of systems from their own countries. If ever there was a well informed group to vote on what system would work here, it would be them. The question that I hope may be answered is why one group of excluded voters was singled out to vote in the referendum but not the other group.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I am a bit troubled by the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, because I am a passionate believer in an appointed House. The passion with which I believe in an appointed House will become more apparent as the Lords reform Bill finds its way through this Chamber. One thing that worries me about the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is that Members of the other place have a vote in general elections but also stand for election in those general elections. If Members of this House were to press to have the vote in general elections, we would make it more likely that others would suggest that we should therefore stand for election here as well. There is a correlation between standing for election and having the vote. It is a dangerous business to play with the idea of Peers in this House having the vote, when many of us will be trying to resist the whole idea that this should become an elected Chamber. That is one of the reasons why I totally oppose the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

How much I admire the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, for his courage at every stage of this Bill. This is obviously not an appropriate Bill to make a change in relation to whether Members of this House should vote, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, accepts. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs is right, however, to put the amendment down. Under this Bill, Peers will have the right to vote in the referendum on what the voting system should be and yet, once they have played their part in deciding what the voting system should be, they have no right to vote using that voting system. This is an opportunity for a short debate as to what the right course in relation to Lords voting is.

It is obvious, historically, why the Lords cannot vote in Commons elections. The nature of Parliament was that the Commons were elected because they were representative. We were not representative. The whole lot of us turned up in the upper House. Therefore, there was no need for any elections. The whole lot of us still turn up in the House, except for the hereditary Peers, who vote for hereditary representatives. Does that mean, therefore, that we do not need to have a vote in relation to the Commons? The answer is no, because the Lords no longer select the Government. The Government are selected exclusively by the Commons. We have influence in relation to Bills. We have a say in what happens in relation to policy. However, it is only a say. We do not vote in relation to the body that selects the Government.

Therefore, once the prisoner issue is dealt with, we, and we alone, are the only group in the country that has no say in selecting the Government of the day. The fact that we do not have the vote is an historical anomaly. There are 700 or 800 of us; no doubt the figure would go up to about 2,000 if the coalition had its way. Therefore, the number suffering the effects of this anomaly will increase, but it is an anomaly that no longer has constitutional justification. In those circumstances, one is obviously looking not for agreement from the Government that this matter should be dealt with in this Bill, but simply for the Government’s view on the matter. I do not expect any time to be allocated to this matter in any legislative programme, but if the Government were to express the view that it needed to be dealt with at an appropriate time, that would have a very significant effect on the processing of the issue.

I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, that if we have the vote people will want us to be elected. The public will not think that because we can vote we should be elected. The question of whether we should be elected depends very much on the quality of what we do and the extent to which we persuade the public either that we should go on as we are or that there is a need for change. It is an important issue and one that will not get an airing in this House except on Bills such as this.

I return to the point that I started with. We are rightly accepted as participants in the decision-making process of whether there should be a change in the system. We are accepted as participants in that process because there is no basis on which it could be said that we should be excluded from that. That is the view that the Government have taken. We are included in Clause 2 as people entitled to vote in the referendum. The Government think that it is wrong that we should be excluded from that. There must be a basis on which the Government have come to that conclusion. I support that conclusion, because the obvious reason for saying that we should be included in the process by which a voting system change should be effected—if it is to be effected—is that there is no democratic reason why we should not be allowed to be included. It is wrong to say that this is a matter for other people; everybody accepts that it is a matter for us. It is an important issue. It is like a whole range of anomalies that you can say do not really cause any problems. However, how you put the constitution together and the extent to which there are consistencies in the constitution are very important. A justification for Peers not being entitled to vote is now required in a constitutional sense. If there is not one, the right course for a Government who are prepared to follow the logic of their constitutional position is to say—

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I disagree with what my noble friend Lord Grocott says for two reasons. First, there are other people who have very important roles in relation to what happens to policy legislation. Even in the period of my noble friend’s pomp, I suspect that the Cabinet Secretary was more important than he was, but nobody ever suggested that he should be deprived of his vote. The Chief Justice is more important than almost everybody in the country in determining what legislation means, but nobody suggests—

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Does the noble and learned Lord accept that the Cabinet Secretary would not have had any vote on legislation?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on this amendment, not because I am completely relaxed about whether this referendum on the alternative vote is held on 5 May or later, because I am not. I think that there will be enormous confusion if the referendum is held on the same day as local elections. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has pointed out, this is an extremely complex matter, which is not well understood by the electorate. Therefore, we need a special day. I am not too worried when it is after the local elections on 5 May, but it should be on a separate day. I know that this would involve £15 million-worth of public expenditure at a time of austerity. But this is a very important change in our constitutional arrangements and it has to be properly debated. The people of this country have got to understand what is at stake.

If the referendum is to be wrapped up in local authority elections with certain, say, Labour campaigners saying, “Vote for your Labour candidate, but vote against the alternative vote in the referendum”—the Conservatives would be doing similar—that will be extremely confusing to the electorate. Therefore, it is important that the referendum is held on a separate day. This is a radical and important change in our electoral system, and it should not be allowed to be muddled up in the local elections. I do not think that it will be satisfactory for anyone, whatever the result of the referendum, if it goes through while the electorate do not understand what was going on. We need a separate date. We need to debate it properly and to make absolutely certain that the people of this country understand what is at stake and understand the issues involved in whether we have an alternative vote system or not. That is why it should be on a separate date and why I am pleased to support the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in his amendment.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, it would seem from what Members were saying at great length last week in a debate lasting nearly two hours, and again from what has just been said, that as a Parliament we have never had to face the prospect of two big decisions on the same day. I remind your Lordships—and I shall be interested to hear from the opposition Front Bench in a moment—that the previous Administration pushed through the referendum on London government and mayoral and Assembly legislation, with the exact same collision of votes on 7 May 1998. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, may like to comment on the following extract from a speech by his colleague Mr Nick Raynsford, who was then the responsible Minister:

“We are holding the referendum on 7 May deliberately to gain the benefits from combining the poll with local government elections. That will result in a considerable saving in public expenditure, which I would have thought all hon. Members would welcome. Separating the referendum date from the local election day would probably result in additional public expenditure of some £2 million to £3 million and could reduce voter turnout. That is not in the interests of democracy or of economy, and the Government do not intend to propose that”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/1997; col. 380]

What was right for London is apparently not right for other parts of the country. Perhaps Members on the other side think that somehow the voters of Scotland and Wales are not capable of taking two quite distinct decisions on the same day but people in London are.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, it would be a good deal safer, and therefore wiser, for the referendum to be indicative rather than mandatory. One reason is the hasty and, frankly, slipshod manner in which the proposition in the Bill has been formulated, has been presented to Parliament and will be presented to the people. These are decisions that have been made in haste and without adequate consideration by all parties.

I confess that it was something of a surprise to me when the Labour Party adopted the alternative vote as party policy. I am not aware that there had been intensive internal consideration within the party. Perhaps I was not listening or was looking the wrong way; or perhaps people, rather wisely, decided not to ask my opinion on the matter. At all events, it was a hastily arrived-at policy shift. If it was hastily arrived at by the Labour Party, it was a good deal more hastily arrived at by the Conservative Party and, I dare say, by the Liberal Democrats. As we all know, the Liberal Democrats did not want AV and the Conservatives did not want AV, yet in this curious fashion they found themselves united in proposing that, after all, it would be a good way to reform the voting system of this country.

As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in the previous debate, you can hardly imagine a more momentous constitutional decision. It is important to think extremely deeply and carefully about how we alter our voting system. Few things could be more important to how we live and how we will be governed, yet self-evidently there has not been any careful pondering of this question. The haste of the timetable that is proposed in the Bill means that, just as Parliament and the political parties will not have thought about it with the care that it warrants, nor will the people have had the opportunity to do so. It is, therefore, all the more important that the referendum should be indicative, in that it would give Parliament the opportunity to think further about what it may be appropriate to do in the light of the advice given by the people.

That is more the case now that the House has not approved the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. It would have been a wise device to enable the merits of alternative versions of alternative voting to be expertly and objectively considered, so that Parliament would have the opportunity to think more carefully than it so far has about which system of alternative voting—if it is to be the alternative vote—should be proposed to the people. If that process is not to go forward, that is another reason why it is important that all concerned should be able to deliberate on these matters for rather longer.

It seems to me also that if we have an indicative rather than mandatory referendum, it will preserve the rightful authority both of the people and of Parliament. I am not an enthusiast for referendums but an exception should be made where the question at issue is major constitutional change and, perhaps most importantly, how the electoral system might be altered. We are trustees of the constitution on behalf of the people who elect their representatives to the other place. In this House we have an important watching brief—a kind of trusteeship of the constitution—to ensure that things are not done recklessly, shoddily, hastily or, in so far as we can influence and determine this, unwisely. Therefore, I am not against a referendum on a major constitutional issue. The people who confer political authority on parliamentarians to act on their behalf should have the right to determine by what system they do so.

Equally, if we subject issues routinely to referendum, we undermine Parliament. I am not an enthusiast for referendums but it is appropriate in this case. If it is indicative rather than mandatory, not only do we give the people the opportunity to have their considered say but we uphold the authority of Parliament finally to determine these matters. For both those reasons I hope very much that the House will approve the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Like my noble friend Lord Deben, I too have great reservations about referenda because they undermine the sovereignty of Parliament. If the result of this referendum is absolutely overwhelmingly in favour of AV, then there is no way that Parliament could ignore the expressed wishes of the people. I do not quite know why my noble friend Lord Tyler is concerned about it being “indicative” rather than “mandatory”. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is right. If a very narrow vote completely changed our voting system, then Parliament should have the option of being able to think again to explore the issues because Parliament has a right and responsibility at that point to give its advice and to debate the issue rather more widely.

Let us face it—we have not had many opportunities to debate this form of voting and an awful lot of the people in this country do not really understand it at all. If this referendum happens, the turnout may conceivably be boosted if we hold it on the same day as the local elections. If it was held on any other day, the turnout would be very low indeed and it would be quite difficult to say that this was a seriously expressed wish of the people of this country. However, as I say, if there is a clear and overwhelming majority in favour of AV, Parliament could not in any way ignore that and the arrangement would have to go through. To be concerned and worried about the idea of this being “indicative” rather than “mandatory” shows a certain sort of paranoia on behalf of those people who believe in this referendum. I advise my noble friends not to be too concerned about it.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, who was introduced into this House on the very same day as me. One of his introducers was the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, the former Prime Minister. She and I had an interesting conversation that day. I doubt she would be very enthusiastic about what we are doing today and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton—I was going to call him “Archie”—represents her.

It is bizarre, is it not? This whole thing is bizarre. All these debates are unbelievable. This Clegg project—because that is what it is—is being pushed through. We know that all the Tories—all the Conservatives whom I know—do not believe in the alternative vote. They are nodding. I have yet to come across one who thinks that it is the right way for the people of Britain to vote in a referendum. Yet, they went through the Lobby just a few moments ago and will go through the Lobby again and again—today, next Monday and next Wednesday—pushing through something that they manifestly do not believe in. Then there are the Liberal Democrats. They do not really believe in the alternative vote; they want STV. Some of them, of course, see this as a Trojan horse—as a thin end of the wedge. The next Bill that will come up will be to move towards single transferable vote or something similar. However, no less a person than the Deputy Prime Minister described the alternative vote as “a miserable little compromise”. Imagine campaigning and people listening to the Churchillian tones over the loudspeaker: “Turn out and vote for our miserable little compromise!” That is why my noble friend Lord Rooker is right about the turnout. I cannot see that there will be any great enthusiasm. I will move an amendment later about the date, which is another very worrying issue.

So the Tories do not really support it. The Liberal Democrats are not really in favour of the alternative vote. Apart from my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who made an interesting speech at Second Reading in favour of it, there are not many people on this side who support it. Most of my colleagues are in favour of first past the post. We have heard my noble friend Lord Grocott expand on this eloquently—I was going to say ad infinitum… ad nauseam—on so many occasions. I am right behind him. There are some on this side who, I must admit, favour proportional representation but not alternative vote. We have had that discussion within the party.

Interim Report: Leader's Group on Members Leaving the House

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral on his report, and indeed his committee on producing a number of options. People have been critical and said to me that this report should have come up with much more definitive proposals. I do not agree with that at all; I think that it lays out all the options that are open to us. They are all unpalatable; we have to choose the least unpalatable of them.

We have to ask: why are we in this position? There is no doubt that the previous Labour Government seemed to be committed to an elected House, yet they were determined to stuff this House like a Strasbourg goose with Peers. We have now reached the point, as has been pointed out, of becoming an object of ridicule. The problem must be addressed. If it is not, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, is right that it will be addressed for us. It is our duty to try to grip this.

I am confused by our new coalition, which has come up with a rather strange formula that somehow the results of the election should be represented in this House. As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has pointed out before now, this is the first time that the Government have a majority over the Opposition in this House, so I do not know why it is necessary to put in so many extra Members. We now have a Government who are more committed to an elected House—I totally oppose that and believe in an appointed one—than any previous Government have been.

We have to ask the Liberal Democrats, as our coalition partners, why they are particularly keen on an elected House and are, at the same time, putting forward many of their friends and supporters to become new Members of this House—they thereby exacerbate the problem that we shall face should we get an elected House. I know that my noble friend Lord Tyler follows me in this debate; perhaps he would explain to the House what seems to me to be that conflict of interests. I know it is irresistible if one has the opportunity to bring one’s friends in here, but one has to look at the constitutional implications of what one is doing.

We have to look at how we can reduce the numbers. I shall start with what I am totally against—I do not think that some form of compulsory retirement of those who are too old is the answer. I think that a judgment based upon what age people are is an arbitrary one. There are certain Members of this House who are completely ineffectual and are quite young and there are other Members of this House who are quite ancient and extremely effective, and I think that we would miss them desperately if we produce some arbitrary age limit by which we pick them out. I think that length of service is equally arbitrary and should be discarded as an option as well.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Strathclyde that voluntary retirement is a wonderful idea, but without massive financial inducements I do not think we are going to see serious numbers leaving voluntarily, so we need to start looking at other options. I originally put down that I thought that a moratorium on new Members would be a good idea; I certainly accept, like my noble friend Lord Astor, that perhaps some restraint should be made on the number coming in. It is absurd that one of the problems has been caused by this new Government in terms of the enormous influx that we have seen and, indeed, having another 50 to come.

When we consider what we should do to address the problem of numbers, I come down to the least of all evils and that is a form of election, very similar to that which was carried out by the hereditaries to reduce their numbers. To talk in round figures, if a party has 200 Members here and it is thought to be right to reduce numbers in the House overall by 25 per cent, then they would vote for the 150 they felt should stay. Noble Lords would make a number of considerations in that election as to the contribution people have made—the amount that they attend the House, or whatever—but who is better to judge who should stay and who should go than our fellow Members within our parties, or, indeed, on the Cross Benches, where they would have to do the same thing? This would have the advantage of removing from the Executive the odium of making arbitrary decisions about who should go and who should stay, which commends it in many ways.

I do not believe, unfortunately, that we can entertain the idea of compensation in any form. The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, is absolutely right; it would be totally unacceptable to public opinion if we were to pay people for no longer being here. It is very sad that that is the case, because people being forced to leave this House would undoubtedly suffer financial hardship, but I am afraid that that is just the way of the world: it is very tough, but in the times of economic hardship in which we are now living, it would be completely unacceptable to pay people for having left this House.

We have to address this problem, we have to do it ourselves and we do not have the option of waiting for legislation to come along at some later date. This problem has to be gripped and it has to be gripped now.