House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on initiating this debate, although one has to wonder whether the overall system of government that I found when I first came to Parliament almost 30 years ago has been damaged beyond repair. Our Chamber cannot look at itself in isolation. I was introduced to a system where Ministers were responsible for departmental outcomes, and when a Minister got it wrong, a resignation was considered necessary and appropriate. Members of Parliament, by and large, had come from business, the professions, the mines, the factories or the armed services and had previously done a real job, developing the skills and experience to which the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, referred, and which would seem essential if one is to act in the nation’s interest.

Parliament functioned on the basis that the law of the land was based on something that we now seem unwilling to acknowledge and articulate: moral values and common law. Perhaps I am a wimp for daring to use such unsophisticated language, but my sole comfort is that it is here in this Chamber that I can still see the remnants of those values. We have made one fundamental error in the fairly recent past, and that was when we created a third legislature—the expensive and unaccountable Supreme Court. The law of the land has, until recently, always belonged to the people. The people have elected their legislators to the Commons, and this Chamber has utilised its skill and experience to fine-tune and to be the peoples’ final arbiter through the Law Lords.

Now we have, like most aspects of government, abjectly surrendered—some probably call it delegated—every aspect of responsibility to unidentifiable, unanswerable and unaccountable individuals cocooned in some detached monastic environment. That is why Question Time is no longer answer time but has deteriorated to become a fairly futile discussion interlude. Ministers may try to do their best, but they are disadvantaged simply because they are no longer in control. We saw it here last week during the Statement on the Gary McKinnon extradition case. That 10-year injustice has not been resolved. Justice has again been put on the “long finger” by a Home Secretary who has effectively said, “I will delegate the matter, without time considerations, to the courts”. Hence, a once 35 year-old with autism spectrum disorder—now 45 years old—is tossed in life’s dustbin for, what, perhaps another 10 years, and that is justice?

Today, I shall not take further time of the House to ask whether the United Kingdom has lost or is losing its way in its relationships with the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and so on. Suffice it to say that I think that the UK has abdicated, or is incrementally abdicating, its authority. If the Government cannot even implement a rail franchise, and it is obvious that they do not know where that went belly up, then the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, belatedly or otherwise, has posed the right question here today. Am I wrong when I perceive Cabinet to be a caucus and government increasingly to be delegated to and—effectively or otherwise—run by proxy bodies? In the past 20 years I have seen deterioration in parliamentary competence and responsibility, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, that today he has sought to alert us to a better possibility which would mean that my next 25 years here could be made more rewarding.