Queen's Speech

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for opening our debate and congratulate him on his appointment. He is highly regarded in this House and I look forward to our future debates. It is true that I have not yet sent him a letter, principally because I no longer have the well oiled machinery of the Civil Service to write it, but he has my very warm wishes. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, on joining the Government. What a fetching sight the noble Lord and the noble Baroness make, sitting on the Front Bench together. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, will make his maiden speech today. I pay tribute to him as an outstanding Permanent Secretary and chair of the Legal Services Commission. He has much to offer your Lordships’ House.

I shall focus most of my remarks on constitutional issues and local government, while my noble friend Lord Bach will concentrate on justice and home affairs. However, I first want to respond to what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, suggested about the previous Government. He mentioned authoritarian indifference to civil rights. I remind him that it was a Labour Government who brought in the Human Rights Act, which the Conservative Party opposite continues to snipe at whenever it is given the chance and whatever the coalition agreement. I am proud that we were responsible for the Race Relations Act 2000 and the Civil Partnership Act and that one of the final pieces of legislation that we took through your Lordships’ House was the Equality Act. All those actions were about expanding the rights of the British people. At the same time, a central concern for us was always the security and safety of the UK, which faced the worst terrorist threat that this nation has ever seen. Our aim was always to get the balance right between public protection and the need to maintain the rights of individuals.

The noble Lord has outlined the Government’s proposals on CCTV, ID cards and DNA. We will study those carefully, but we need to be wary of taking actions that might undermine our ability to fight crime. We should not, for instance, underestimate the impact of CCTV in reducing the fear of crime and antisocial behaviour. Talking to people who live in the communities most affected will leave you in little doubt as to the value of CCTV. With DNA, advances in technology have played a critical part in solving serious crimes. Last year alone, 832 positive matches were made in cases of rape, murder and manslaughter.

We will also look carefully at the Government’s policing policies. The programme that the coalition has agreed to has much to say about structural changes but is ominously silent on police resources, front-line policing numbers and crime reduction targets. We shall scrutinise these policing measures carefully to ensure that the safety of our citizens is the paramount consideration.

I turn to constitutional issues. We are promised a new politics, but I have to say that the signs so far are not entirely encouraging. Indeed, many of the Government’s proposals seem more suited to the need to shore up the coalition rather than to enhance our democracy. The Government hardly made a good start with the leaking of the Queen’s Speech over the weekend and then, on Monday, with the announcement of major cuts in government expenditure not to Parliament but to the media.

On local government, the coalition agreement proclaims radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to councils. The rhetoric is impressive, but let us look at the reality. The 12 largest authorities in England are to be forced to have a referendum on an elected mayor, whether they want to or not. In education, local authorities will lose powers, influence and budgetary flexibility. The first step towards giving financial autonomy to local authorities is to instruct them to freeze council tax. With the introduction of a democratic element to the NHS and to the police, local government is being bypassed in favour of direct elections. I suspect that the only real freedom given to local government is to decide where the cuts are going to be made.

Nowhere are the needs of the coalition put first more than in its proposals on fixed-term Parliaments. As my noble friend Lord Adonis asked, why is the interval between elections to be five years? Why not four? Of the 14 general elections that have been held in the past 50 years, nine have been in or before the fourth year. Why are the public being given fewer opportunities rather than more to choose their Government?

Then there is the 55 per cent proposal. Votes of confidence have had a critical role in our Parliament; a confidence defeat for a Government leads either to a request for Dissolution or to the resignation of the Government. As the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, put it so brilliantly on Tuesday, everyone understands that, so why mess around with the principle? The reasons are evolving and changing. Oliver Letwin and Danny Alexander said in the Observer on 16 May that the aim was to guard against the suspicion that one or other of the parties could,

“pull the plug”,

on the coalition,

“and force an early election”.

So this is a quick fix on the constitution, essentially because neither party in the coalition trusts the other. However, the argument has moved on. We had a rather different explanation from David Heath, the Deputy Leader in the other place, who said on Tuesday night:

“If the Government lost a vote of confidence, they would no longer be the Government … Then another party or coalition of parties might be able to form a Government from within the existing House of Commons … If no one can form a Government that has the confidence of the House, Parliament will be dissolved”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/10; cols. 148-49.]

That still raises a number of questions about how it might happen and the logic of 55 per cent. I remain concerned that what looks like major constitutional change is being written on the back of an envelope with apparently no intention for pre-legislative scrutiny. I can assure the noble Lord—

[Lord Lucas]

Does the noble Lord remember the abolition of the Lord Chancellor? Was that not rather similar?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am sure that the House will learn lessons from that experience. It all looks different from this side of the House. I can assure the noble Lord that we shall certainly scrutinise the legislation carefully.

I now turn to the alternative vote. Will the noble Baroness tell us in her winding-up speech when we can expect legislation on the proposed referendum and when the referendum is intended to be held? Will a threshold be set in terms of the turnout and the size of the majority that is required for a yes vote in the referendum to succeed? Fifty-five per cent, perhaps?

Why is the coalition bent on reducing the number of Members of Parliament? I have yet to see any persuasive arguments for that. Are 70,000 electors really too small a number for an MP to represent? The intention for more equal constituency sizes will create some unnatural constituencies, as the Electoral Commission pointed out in February. Constituencies will change more frequently, destabilising the link between MPs and constituents. Again, I suggest that the answer is bound up with a narrow, partisan interest and the proposed speeding up of individual voter registration.

We passed legislation to provide for a carefully staged transition from household registration to individual voter registration in a way that would reduce the risk of people falling off the electoral register, as happened in Northern Ireland. If that careful process is ripped up and the rollout made prematurely, millions of people could fall off the register. I remind the House that that is extremely important because constituency boundaries are drawn on the basis of registered electors. We know from the Electoral Commission that 3.5 million eligible voters are missing from the register today. They are predominantly missing in areas of poorer, younger, mobile populations. It would be wholly unacceptable for seats to be cut and boundaries redrawn on the basis of an electoral register from which millions of our fellow citizens are missing.

I am pleased that the Government are supporting the implementations of the Wright committee’s proposals to make the House of Commons more effective, but what of your Lordships’ House? I noted with interest the remarks made on Tuesday by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who said:

“I also believe that we should look afresh at our working practices. I do not think we should lose sight of the remarkable privileges that Peers already enjoy, such as the right, not given to Back-Bench Members in another place, to table amendments at three stages of a Bill, and to have each one heard and replied to. We should always keep our working practices up to date”.—[Official Report, 25/5/10; col. 22.]

The noble Lord’s rather late conversion to procedural reform is, on the face of it, most welcome, but I say to him that any attempt to restrict the right of Back-Benchers to scrutinise legislation will be firmly resisted. I am happy to discuss the report of the Labour Peers’ working group, which was in the context of a wider debate about the conventions and the pressing against the boundaries of those conventions by the party opposite at the time.

Finally, I come to reform of your Lordships’ House. The coalition parties have agreed to establish a committee. That is progress indeed. The noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Strathclyde, and I have already spent many happy hours in such a committee. I must put a question to the Minister, as I am not sure what the committee is going to be asked to do. It seems that the outcome of its work is already known. He has already said it today: a mainly or wholly elected upper Chamber under PR and a system of grandfathering for the current Peers. So what is left for the committee to do? What will the composition of the committee be? Will its outcome be a White Paper and will a draft Bill be published for pre-legislative scrutiny?

Grandfathering is not really about the transition; it is a term used in the regulation of professions and essentially it means that existing practitioners go forward into the new qualified regulated profession. It is clear that grandfathering means that existing Members become Members of a reformed House. I ask the noble Baroness to confirm my interpretation.

In the mean time, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, confirmed, we are faced with the apparent intention of the coalition to appoint dozens, if not hundreds, of new Peers. Why is this being done, given that the Government already heavily outnumber the Opposition, with 258 Members compared to our 211? There has long been an understanding that there should be rough parity between the Government and the main Opposition. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has eloquently put the case for a strong second Chamber. In his Politeia article, he argued:

“The executive may not want a second opinion, but every country needs a Parliamentary system that provides one. Part of that must lie in a strong, independent House of Lords”.

Are those the words of a leading Member of a coalition that advocates swamping the Lords to give the Government an inbuilt and overwhelming majority?

Then there is the question of the conventions. I ask the noble Baroness to confirm that the committee will look at how the current conventions will be underpinned and the primacy of the Commons assured in an elected House. I remind her of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, on the conventions, which made it clear that firm proposals for changing the composition of the House would require a re-examination of those conventions.

The coalition professes that it wants to strengthen Parliament to create a new politics. I would have thought that this should have been grounded in promises that the parties made to the public in the recent election. However, when we look at the proposals to be brought before us, how many do we see that were in the manifestos of the two parties? The Conservatives were certainly silent on a referendum on the alternative vote. They were also silent on fixed-term Parliaments. The Conservatives were silent on the intervals between elections to be fixed at five years, as were, incidentally, the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives were silent on the 55 per cent super-majority required for the Dissolution of Parliament, as were the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives were silent on their intention to give the Executive a massive majority in the Lords, as were the Liberal Democrats. We see proposals for major constitutional change that were not put to the British people at the recent election. They were cobbled together behind closed doors. They amount to a lack of trust between the two parties and they will do little—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am absolutely delighted to be in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Over the past 13 years, I have found myself in the same Lobby as them on many occasions in the defence of liberty—and liberty is the lodestone of my life in Parliament. There are differences between us, but I have managed to work out my differences with those on my own Front Bench and I am sure that working them out with the Liberal Democrats will be a good deal easier.

The Opposition are still addicted to oppression rather than liberty. That was clear from what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about CCTV. It is a drug that brings short-term relief in publicity but has nasty long-term side effects. I very much hope that a few years in opposition will have the same effect as a stay in the Priory and that we will recover the Labour Party that I used to look up to 20 years ago. Indeed, I was under the illusion that it was still there in 1997. I remember consoling myself over the loss of my job in 1997 by the thought that Michael Howard would no longer be Home Secretary. Every Labour Home Secretary has been worse and now at last we have the hope of some improvement.

I am also delighted that we are putting a strong emphasis on local decision-making. That is a constitutional change that, if it is taken radically and if we do as much as we should, will have great consequences. I see it fitting in extremely well with the changes in number, size and distribution that are proposed for parliamentary constituencies. I hope that it will bring an end to, or at least the diminution of, parliamentarians viewing themselves as consultants who deal with drainage and other petty issues that should be dealt with locally and properly but are not because of the lack of power and quality at a local level.

I totally agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said about prisons. I declare an interest in that I am heavily connected with the charity Safe Ground, which works in prison education. Yes, there are people in prison who need to be there for our protection and people who need to be there as a punishment for what they have done, but there are many more who ought to be in prison or some form custody or penalty for their rehabilitation. You cannot rehabilitate given the state of prisons at the moment. They are overcrowded and there is no money left because of all these people who are pushed into prison. All we reap is a reducing rate of good behaviour after prison; we reap ever greater expense without doing our society any good. I very much hope that we will be able to take a few radical measures just to set us on the right track again and get the prison population to dip. We must allow money and practices to come through that will improve the rate of rehabilitation and get us back to where we used to be with prisons under Home Secretaries such as the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, and Lord Whitelaw. That is where I would like to find myself.

I was immensely inspired, too, by the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. If he needs a foot soldier in his campaign, I am happy to be that. I have not heard such stirring words since I last read C Northcote Parkinson on public service reform. We can do so much. For example, prestige could be given to those in the Civil Service responsible for delivery to make sure that they see projects through from beginning to end and reap the rewards for it, rather than prestige being a matter attached to policy development, where the incentive is to develop policy after policy and to keep the whole thing turning and changing. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, knows much more about that than I do and I would be happy to treat him as my leader in this matter. I look for early action.

We all know that constitutional reform is not easy. The party opposite can look back on the abolition of the Lord Chancellor and even on the creation of IPSA as things on which it wished it had taken a bit more care. We have clearly fallen into the same trap when it comes to fixed-term Parliaments. Yes, it is a good idea. I support it and I think that it is well worth exploring. But it is not a simple idea. There are lots of little consequences and lots of things that we need to work out. I do not think that my noble friend should take the Labour Party too seriously when it huffs on about 55 per cent. It had fixed-term Parliaments in its manifesto and must have had a mechanism in mind for making sure that the Government could not simply overturn it because they happened to have a majority of seats in the other House. The figure of 55 per cent is randomly chosen. In most Parliaments in the past it would have been totally ineffective because the Government had a greater number of votes than that and could just have overturned it. The figure of 66 per cent, as in Scotland, seems to be much more sensible. We know what the Government are about and why they want to do it, so let us take this carefully and sensibly and not rush at it. We should make sure that we get the detail right, think through all the possible complications and then go firm on legislation. The Government have got their five years for this Parliament. There is no need to rush for further reform.

My sentiments on Lords reform are similar. I am a supporter of an elected House of Lords, which is a necessary, good and inevitable idea. I am as disturbed as the party opposite by the idea that a House that is already too large will have 150 to 200 Members added to it in order to make up the proportions. It would be ridiculous and would bring us into total disrepute. I do not think that noble Lords opposite should worry too much about their ability to defeat the Government. They managed it quite a lot while I was on the Front Bench when we had a vast hereditary army ever at our beck and call. A little bit of having late-night Divisions and a little smiling at Back-Bench Members opposite will work wonders.

Above all, I hope that in considering Lords reform we will not do what the party opposite has done and conduct our deliberations in secret. We should be open in our processes. If we set up a committee, it should publish its deliberations and be open to representations. We should have not just us but the nation feeling that it has been absorbed in—to the extent that it wishes to be absorbed in—the process of deciding the future of the House of Lords. It is not a simple matter. Anything that we do will have consequences. However limited the changes that we make around even the fact of election will have consequences. If we go for any of the more radical options, such as those proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, we will find ourselves in difficult waters. To do that closed, without involving people in the process, is merely to invite years of chaos afterwards.