Covid-19: UK Arrivals
Debate between Lord McFall of Alcluith and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town(3 years ago)
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The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
The noble Lord, Lord Flight, is not present so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
As the Minister has said, our universities have long been a welcoming and inspiring academic hub for international students but stories such as the ones that we have heard—along with, I am afraid, the attack on freedom of speech at the LSE and the shameful treatment of Professor Stock, which we will come to shortly—added to Covid and online teaching, to say nothing of the Brexit fallout, which means that EU schools can no longer use group passports, all question our ability to attract youngsters from across the globe. What are the Government doing to re-establish our reputation in this sector?
Liaison Committee Report
Debate between Lord McFall of Alcluith and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I rise very briefly to pay the same tribute as the noble Lord, Lord McFall, not only to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, but to the chairs of our other committees, who do the most extraordinary work. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. Where I disagree with my noble friend Lord Adonis is that I do not think that they do it for prominence. The great shortfall in what he has just said is exactly that MPs do it for their own prominence. One of the many strengths of our system is that our chairs actually do not get prominence; that is not why they do the job—they do it for good hard work and the quality of what they produce.
The funniest thing, though, is the idea that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, would in any way be open to persuasion by Ministers. We have seen him jumping up on almost every occasion to get at his own Government’s Ministers for having done not very much about the report he has produced, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. That is a strength of the sort of people in this House. They do not owe their future to the Whips and they show it. My noble friend of course is a brilliant example of that. He does not owe his future in this House to the Whips and he shows that by his many contributions.
Having mentioned the report from the noble Lord, Lord Forsythe, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said. On page 8 of today’s green pages there is a list of the reports that are yet to be discussed, of which his is not even the oldest; there are some older than that. I do hope that we can take forward the comments that have been made about timely reports from Ministers—I am glad to see some nods—and speedy debates. For the moment, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McFall, for all that he has done in making this report possible.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith) [V]
I thank my colleagues for their comments. In fairness to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, the European Affairs Committee will certainly have a lot to do in the coming months. That is one of the reasons why, in discussions with the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, we decided that the present committees would extend until the end of March, so that we can view how the land lies. At the end of the day, that was quite a wise decision.
The issue of government reports has been raised in the chairs’ forum. I have written to Ministers and engaged with the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip on this in my regular meetings with them; it is a live part of the agenda. This is an issue about which the committee chairs in particular feel strongly. We will continue that process, so that there is maximum engagement with the House. I take the point that there is no use having a report that is not debated in the House.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned a “proper, systematic arrangement” for our committees. I am grateful to him for those remarks, but the essence of our committees now is their flexibility, larger footprint and cross-cutting nature. We can respond to challenges as we see them. For example, we established the COVID-19 Committee specifically to look at the issues of Covid-19. We have also established a Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee. Only yesterday, I had a meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on that point. These committees are working well, and having this systematic arrangement is important.
The issue of the election of chairs was reviewed quite a long time ago, but it was felt by the Liaison Committee, and those who provided evidence to it, that this was not the time to do it. It is still on the agenda and I am happy to receive any representations on such issues as we go forward, not least from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.
That touches on the issue of increased powers. I am in touch with the current House of Commons inquiry into Select Committee powers, along with the Leader of the House, regarding greater government participation and Ministers giving evidence. One feature of the review of committees was that the Liaison Committee of the House of Lords would engage with the Liaison Committee in the House of Commons at an annual meeting. That has not yet taken place, but I have written to the chair of the House of Commons Liaison Committee, Sir Bernard Jenkin, to make him aware of what we have been doing. I have no doubt that we will shortly be meeting him, and others, to ensure that there is coherence in our approach to this area as we go forward.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on her participation in the Liaison Committee and her interest in everything that the committee has done, notwithstanding her very heavy workload on the Front Bench. I take her point about the work of all the committee chairs, and I congratulate them and their staff on their work and application. An awful lot of work goes on in the background and there is fantastic staff input to our committees—our work would not be possible without them, so it is important that we congratulate them as well. I will finish on that celebratory note.
Deputy Chairmen of Committees
Debate between Lord McFall of Alcluith and Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith) [V]
My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, unsurprisingly, I welcome strongly the Motion that has just been moved but, slightly cheekily, because it is about Deputy Speakers, I shall echo what the Lord Speaker said earlier today. He paid tribute, absolutely rightly, to all the people who have enabled us over these really trying few months to carry on working in this Chamber and remotely, ensuring that Parliament could continue to do its work.
From these Benches, which may be a bit empty at the moment, I would like to record our thanks to all those people, seen and unseen, who have made all this possible as we enter the holidays. I said to someone as I was coming in that I was clocking off the hours until I went on my holiday; he looked to me and said, “Not half as much as me, my Lady”. Can we record our thanks to them—to the seen, who we have here with us, and the unseen? The cleaners have had to do different work from what they have done before; Hansard, with occasional sound issues, has been trying to work out what we were trying to say; the catering staff have had to protect themselves and travel by public transport. There has been the most enormous amount of work. I have got to know a whole lot of broadcasting staff while at home; they have even occasionally told me whether my hair was straight before I came on.
It has been a varied and enormous amount of work. We should not take any of it for granted, so of course I support this Motion. I wish luck to the new Deputy Speakers who we are now to appoint, as well as thanking all those who have got us here.