House of Lords: Facilities
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Lea of Crondall
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have taken into consideration issues such as members’ effectiveness and provision of facilities in increasing the size of the House to over 800.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
The Government consider a range of issues before making appointments to the House of Lords.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I thank the noble Lord for that extremely helpful reply but, at a time of financial stringency, will the Government take responsibility for the escalation since the election of both the direct costs of Members and the costs of buildings, desks, telecoms, the Library, catering facilities and committee-servicing support staff, albeit that there are no more seats in the Chamber and no more speaking time in the Chamber? Secondly, we hear the Machiavellian argument that, whereas a constantly rising trend to 800 Members and above is unsustainable—that is correct—that is thereby one of the reasons for abolishing this House as we know it and replacing it with a second-class Commons. Is this not a crisis of the coalition’s own deliberate making and a tactic worthy of any self-respecting Bolshevik?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, that is a first for me. I do not know whether the noble Lord was rehearsing his speech for what will no doubt be an action-packed two-day debate on the future of your Lordships’ House in a few weeks’ time, but I do not recognise any of his characterisations. It is true that the House is bigger than it has been for some years. What is more significant is that the daily attendance has risen—though it is still below our full strength, at about 450 per day—and that has put some pressure on our facilities. However, various committees of the House look into this. The House should of course be comfortable and be able to provide for the needs of noble Lords, but these issues are simply not related to future reform.
House of Lords Reform Bill
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am sure the whole House will have heard my noble friend. I can confirm that it is my understanding that not only the Opposition but also the Cross Benches and everybody else who wishes to play a part in the Joint Committee will wish to do so most constructively to try to reach a good solution that would suit not just this House or the other place, but also the nation.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware that in the House of Commons this afternoon, in response to questions on this very matter, Ministers prayed in aid the fact that the present House of Lords is unsustainable on the grounds that its membership is approaching 800 and will go beyond that? Does he not agree that it is the present Government who are doing the majority of the appointing? The White Paper states that a statutory appointments commission should be available to deal with 20 per cent of Members, if they are appointed. Why can we not go forward with the Steel Bill and say that the present appointments, which would include a formula between the parties on a ceiling, should not go forward? The Government claim—even though we will obviously be here for some years yet—that it is unsustainable to have the present growth stampede, led by the Government, in changing the composition of the House.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I do not know how long the noble Lord will be here, but there is no need to go forward with the Steel Bill if the intention is to have elected Members by 2015. We will spend probably the next Session and maybe even the Session after that on passing the House of Lords reform Bill.
European Council
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, my noble friend is right some of the conditions for entry into the euro that were laid out in the Maastricht treaty, and other conditions including those on deficits, have been broken. I believe that there is a sense of moral hazard because they have been bailed out, but it is in the interests of everyone within Europe to make sure that no further countries find themselves in financial trouble. That is why the eurozone is itself taking steps to try to manage its affairs in a more coherent way.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, I sympathise with the noble Lord, with the puppies snapping at his heels, but will he accept my congratulations on the first few paragraphs of the Statement which say that we indeed think that it is in Britain's interest to bring stability to the eurozone? That is an important signal for people in the City of London and elsewhere who think the opposite.
Secondly, President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel and our Prime Minister have written a joint letter on the budget. If we are going to have that close triangular relationship, does it not follow that that will probably be true of banking, energy policy and other areas? The question of creep towards Brussels running things, which is a bit of hyperbole, is one of evolution rather than any major revolutionary change.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, yes, we are in favour of stability in the eurozone, but we also feel that it is entirely right for nation states to stand up for their interests and to get together. That is in a way exactly what happened in this letter between Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy and others, who suggested—rightly, in my view—that it is time for the European budget to come under further control. That is not seeking to centralise power within Brussels; it is seeking to exert more pressure and more control from member states on the European Union. That is a very good direction of travel.
Business of the House
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(13 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is very hard to answer that question as Leader of the whole House without looking back in the mists of time at the reasons for the 1911 Act. The reason we have had the privilege of dealing with monetary and taxation legislation is in the history of 100 years ago. With the best will in the world, I have no intention of reopening that any more than any of my predecessors have done over the last 99 years.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I suppose it was because Mr Speaker was not advised by his Clerks that it was a money Bill. If it had been a money Bill, we would have disposed of it rather more quickly than we did.
House of Lords Reform
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
The noble Lord, Lord Richard, proves my point and I am immensely grateful to him. We are going to investigate whether there should be a scheme.
The noble Lord, Lord Steel, wants to have a vote on the abolition of by-elections for hereditary Peers. I can confirm to the House that when we publish a Bill at the end of this year, which is only a few months away, there will be not only a proposal for the abolition of by-elections for hereditary Peers but one for a very substantial cut in the number of life Peers under the Life Peerages Act 1958. That is the by-product of going down this road.
The noble Lord has put down only four suggestions. He could have had a fifth: whether or not there should be an elected or an unelected House—as if there were any doubt about that, incidentally. His next proposal concerns the removal of Members convicted of serious criminal offences. Frankly, I was surprised to see this because I cannot imagine that anybody would not be in favour of having a statutory scheme similar to that of the House of Commons. It is certainly our intention that this should be covered in the legislation when it comes forward, once we have had a suitable debate on that subject. The provision already applies in another place; there is no good reason why it should not apply here.
The creation of a statutory appointments commission is infinitely more complicated and is the most difficult and controversial aspect of the noble Lord’s proposals. It is difficult and controversial at least in part because the appointments system that we have already seems to work pretty well. Many of the Peers on the Cross Benches came out of the Appointments Commission and they show up that commission rather better than many of us had imagined would be the case. However, if we still had an appointed element in this House, there would have to be some kind of system, and it would be very surprising if that was not a statutorily-based system.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Is the noble Lord not aware that, in introducing his Motion, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said that it applies to the period between now and the never-never land when the Bill will come into operation? To say that this will all be covered by the Bill and that the hereditary by-elections will automatically ipso facto go at that time does not address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Steel.
Lord Strathclyde
But of course it does. The Government have pledged to produce a Bill by the end of the year. I could ring up the parliamentary draftsman tomorrow morning and say, “We have a cracking good idea. We have four marvellous suggestions that none of us has thought of before. Please draft a Bill”. These measures require legislation. They cannot just be willed. They cannot just happen.
House of Lords Reform
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, the fundamental flaw in the approach in the Statement made by the Leader of the House yesterday is that we are playing at demotic politics without the demos. For years we have been carrying on as though there is an issue in the country but, wherever else there is an issue, it is not in the country. We have therefore had to invent a demos who want something, which we then have to give them. A moment’s thought suggests that that is an erroneous starting point. There can be many other starting points, but I wish to clear that one out of our subconscious first.
This leads directly to the second fallacy in the line of proceeding. Someone has said that we must have a committee with a limited remit—build a Trojan horse. If you want to build a Trojan horse there is not much more you can do other than build it. I cannot think of someone saying you should put down an amendment if you want to build a Trojan horse—you have got to get on and build it. My metaphors are often hard to keep running, but this one would result in a process whereby it would be hard to look at anything other than building the Trojan horse.
Can all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and many of the points made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester—who made an interesting contribution, as did the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston—be brought within the building of, or even inside, the Trojan horse? That will produce a difficulty for many of us; it is an impenetrable remit that will prevent us getting to the practical and philosophical points that lie behind it.
Therefore, to use the vernacular that has been used more than once, it would be nice if we could take literally, objectively and honestly the famous aphorism, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. However, what is it that is broke? Let us say, “Okay. This is not a perfect place. Something is perhaps a little bit broke. Let us look at it”. There is a gap in the range of people who come here. The noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, who is not in his place, said in his evidence to the Constitution Select Committee—this was drawn to my attention by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth—that there is a danger that we are appointing too many people in our own image. There is something in that. It raises the practical question of what you do to avoid appointing too many people in your own image.
In the Labour Party there is certainly scope for getting the National Executive Committee and the conference to look at the appointments system. This is a reform measure and, as the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, said in an excellent speech, the Labour Peers’ Group is a practical reforming group. A majority of the group—indeed, it was a consensus—wrote to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in answer to his suggestion that we should put forward any ideas, and said that we wanted these four points considered. I am not saying that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, did not have an idea in his head until that moment in history, but he picked up on that principle and no one at any stage has ever said that there was anything other than genuine reform in it.
The only request I would make of my very good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, is that he does not repeat the canard that we are only putting forward the Steel Bill in order to put off the revolution of election: that in the Steel Bill we want a body of six or seven people to make all political appointments and so on. Perhaps I may put on record for the nth time that that is specifically not what we want. In the last version of the Steel Bill before the election, it was spelt out specifically that that is not what we are proposing. We are proposing virtually the opposite: that the parties should put up criteria to be registered with the Appointments Commission.
Two aspects of democracy would then be met and the balance between the parties would not be too far out. The Liberal Democrats would say that there are not enough Liberal Democrats, but the balance between Labour and Conservative over the years has met the three elections’ average. This is not like the nonsense in the coalition document. The worst drafted sentence in the whole document is that they want a House of Lords that reflects the last general election. I do not know which innumerate person in the coalition talks late at night wrote that sentence, but it would be totally impossible unless there were 1,000 Members within a few years—we leapfrog you, you leapfrog us.
The way in which these ideas can be looked at side by side with building the Trojan horse may cause a difficulty. One way through may be to look at the way in which we relate to Members of Parliament. There is no feeling among most MPs that this demotic politics needs to find the demos, but there has been a bit of a reaction. As Jack Straw said late at night here in the wash-up—this was reported in the newspapers so it can only be accurate—coming up to the House of Lords is like going to another planet. If these two planets are to have Members who know each other, and there are no pointed heads on one side or the other, we ought to get to know our colleagues at the other end a lot more than we do. There are some very notable colleagues—my noble friend Lord Grocott springs to mind on our side—who have spent many distinguished years in the Commons. We know many people in the House of Commons who, as soon as you have the second pint with them—but not only because you buy them a second pint—start to see the sense of what you are saying.
We should find a way in which we can continue to look at the merits of the proposal by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and parallel proposals, side by side with this mad idea of building a Trojan horse. George Woodcock, who was the very distinguished general secretary of the TUC when I joined, used to quote something that I never understood. He said, “Structure is a function of purpose”. After 50 years, I begin to see what he was talking about, and that is where we should begin the conversation.
Government Spending
Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts(14 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there are 20 minutes for Back-Benchers to speak, so we have plenty of time. I invite the noble Lord to speak first, and then we will hear from one of my noble colleagues.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. I think that is the protocol. I have two further questions for the Minister. First, is he aware that, as an annualised rate, the deficit—all this is premised on the huge increase in the deficit—was 2.5 per cent 18 months ago and is now 11.1 per cent? That has created a hole in the economic output against trend of about £50 million. Does he not find it totally incredible to say that that is the fault of public sector workers? Is it more likely to be the fault of the top 0.1 per cent of the population whose average wage is over £2 million? The benefit is going to those people, but the cost is because public expenditure has got to go up to pay for unemployment benefit and tax revenues will go down because of lower income tax and lower corporation tax.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, for his question. He quite rightly points to the huge size of the deficit. He suggests that the Government somehow imply that it is the fault of public sector workers. There is no question that that is the suggestion. We are all in this together. I take his point, but there is no suggestion that public sector workers should bear more than their fair share of the burden.