Clerk of the Parliaments

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I, too, pay tribute to Sir David Beamish and thank him for all that he has done for us. It has been my unique privilege as Convener to observe Sir David at close quarters on many occasions when he was doing his job as Clerk of the Parliaments. These observations have been, if I may put it this way, both from the front and from behind. I met him face to face in his office at our regular fortnightly meetings when we would discuss matters of mutual interest and I could watch him from behind each sitting day, he in his place at the Table and me in mine directly behind him on the Cross Benches, especially at Question Time. If there are two words that I think best describe the impression that these observations have made, at least on me, they are “boundless energy”. A conversation with him was always a stimulating experience. If you asked him a question, the words were hardly out of your mouth before he answered it, and his speed of thought was so astonishing that there were times when I wondered whether he had had a chance to think at all, but being David of course he did.

As for his behaviour as seen from behind at Question Time when he had to remain silent, it was his physical agility that impressed me. There was the jump to his feet as he called upon each noble Lord to put the Question. There was the crouching position that he adopted as the seven-minute deadline approached, which became even more pronounced as the Clock moved on towards eight minutes. At that stage his hand would grip the side of the Table to give him increased leverage for the next jump up to call the next Question. There was physical agility on other occasions, too. When the Lord Speaker or a Deputy Chairman of Committees got into difficulties on the Woolsack, those at the Table, so far away, had to resort to sign language. However, in David’s case it was not just sign language that he used; sometimes it was a unique kind of semaphore as he waved his arms around with increasing vigour in an urgent attempt to get his message across. So whether it be mental agility or physical agility, I doubt whether we ever had a more athletic Clerk of the Parliaments.

As has been mentioned already, David entered the service of the House in 1974. In her autobiography, The World Walks By, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, paid a generous and unique tribute to the help he gave her when he was in the Clerks’ department in the 1980s. It was he who drafted various amendments for her when she was involved with the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill, and it is remarkable that he is the only person who is named in that chapter, so it was a unique privilege.

As Sir David reminded the Cross-Bench Peers when he came to speak to us at our weekly meeting on the day before his last day in the House before Easter, the reputation of the House at the start of the 1980s was even more fragile than it is today. Today, all the talk is about the size of the House and the need for reform to address that issue. In the 1980s, he said that the talk was all about abolition. A motion that the House should be abolished was carried at one of the party conferences—I leave your Lordships to decide which it was—by 6 million votes to 45,000. Since then, reforms have been made not only to our composition but to the ways in which we work. As a result, as has been said, the House is now a very different place from what it was when he embarked on his career all those years ago.

Sir David has played his full part in the development of better working practices with obvious good humour and efficiency. He has been a great servant of this House, and we on these Benches join all noble Lords in thanking him most warmly for all he has done for us and in wishing him well for the life in the wider world that undoubtedly now lies ahead of him.

Before I close, I, too, join in the words of welcome to his successor, Ed Ollard, and to those who will join him at the Table, and we look forward very much to working with them in the years that lie ahead.