Liaison Committee

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may express some considerable disappointment that yet again the Liaison Committee has rejected proposals in my name and in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Jopling, for a foreign affairs or an international affairs committee. I express even greater disappointment that the Chairman of Committees should not have thought it necessary to explain why this proposal, which has been put forward on rather a large number of occasions, was rejected. He will be well aware, from last week’s debate on soft power, for example, that there is support for it from all corners of the House. Will he please therefore tell the House what consideration was given to the proposals put forward by these three Members of the House? At least we will then hear some explanation of why this rather luddite approach to this policy is still prevailing.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has just said. I think many of your Lordships are aware, and I am sure that the noble Lord is aware, that the global established order is now unravelling. Vast changes are taking place in foreign policy and in the interests and the promotion of the safeguarding of this country. Your Lordships’ House is full of considerable expertise on these matters, both long-term and short-term. I have heard it suggested that we must not duplicate the work of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the other place. I have to say that having been for 10 years the chair of that committee, I have some experience of how it works and I believe that there is no danger of duplication at all. On the contrary, if there was an international affairs committee in your Lordships’ House, it would be able to take up, reinforce and build on the excellent reports that come from that committee. Far from duplicating or getting in the way of it, there would be a very strong case, which I believe is getting stronger by the day, for setting up such a committee. I hope that it will now be considered very carefully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I may intervene for a moment. I am a member of the Liaison Committee and it may be that noble Lords will be interested to hear what goes through some of our minds. We are not against the idea of a Select Committee on foreign affairs, but it is a question of whether that would be better in the immediate circumstances than the position that we have at the moment whereby, annually, foreign affairs is given an ad hoc placing. The system has worked well. I am in the middle of reading the debate on soft power which took place the other day, and it was an excellent debate. It is the same each year whenever an ad hoc committee dealing with foreign affairs makes its report. We then have a debate on those matters.

However, we cannot confine debates on foreign affairs to a very small number of people. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has said, this House has a very large number of people with a vast amount of knowledge about these matters. If they are given the opportunity to become one of the very select few to serve on a committee of that nature, and who I understand would then serve for three years on a rotation basis, only they will have the almost exclusive opportunity to carry out investigations and inquiries into issues of foreign affairs. Under the ad hoc procedural arrangements, far more people have the opportunity to engage in debate on these matters. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, wishes to correct me, but I understand that that is the position. All I would say is that there is another side to this. We are not opposed to the idea, but let us give more people an opportunity to become involved in the inquiries that take place on these very sensitive subjects.

Finally, in the event that we have a foreign affairs committee, who will pick the agenda? It will be the foreign affairs committee. Under the ad hoc procedure, we pick the subject: you pick the subject—the House of Lords picks the subject. If they wish, Members can walk into a Lobby and vote against this report, but if they do not wish to do so—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I wonder if the noble Lord could answer a brief question. Who is “we”?

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

“We” is the House—the whole House decides. The noble Lord can oppose the Motion on this report and divide the House if he so wishes, but I presume that he is not going to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, as far as I am aware, there would be an opportunity for the House to vote on it now if it wished. That is the matter before us.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the Chairman of Committees is in a bit of a hole, and I ask him not to go on digging. For example, the point that he made about all Members of the House having the right to put forward subjects could perfectly well be fulfilled within the remit of an international affairs committee. All that you need to do in setting up such a committee is to require it to be open to all Members of the House for suggestions as to what subjects should be chosen. It could be done just as well that way as in this way. I do not oppose the choice that the Chairman of Committees has put forward as the international subject for the next Session, but will he please agree to ask the Liaison Committee to consider putting the matter to the House for decision?

[The Chairman of Committees]

The noble Lord offers us the novel suggestion that a permanent sessional committee would canvass the views of all individual Members of the House. I am not aware of any other sessional committee that makes decisions about its future work programme on that basis. Perhaps others would like to try that novel suggestion out first.

There is another reason why the Liaison Committee has come to this view. It is simply that foreign affairs is a fairly heterogeneous area. It is fairly clear that if you are having an inquiry on Ukraine, say, you are more than likely to want to bring in people with expertise and interests that are slightly different from those of people interested in things like sexual violence in war zones. We are able to bring together the best collection of people with expertise in the whole foreign affairs field to deal with particular topics, rather than having a continuing committee of roughly the same sort of people going on for several years. That gives us a much greater opportunity to have variety and novelty and to bring expertise to bear, and that is why we have such high quality and a high reputation for the work of our ad hoc committees.