Leader of the House

Lord McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, in leading the tributes to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, I am able to be the first to welcome formally as his successor the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, is already very well regarded and liked by this House, and I both welcome his very imaginative appointment and look forward to working with him closely in the future, but he has a very hard act to follow. The departure from the Front Bench of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is a moment of great significance for this House. We shall all miss him, and especially so at great occasions, such as Prorogation, through the clerk not having to read out his full name, as that will mean that the Prorogation ceremony will be a good deal shorter.

A former Member of this House, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx—Harold Wilson as was—once very acutely observed that, “A week is a long time in politics”. Having done 25 years on the Conservative Front Bench, I calculate that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has done 1,300 weeks in politics, which is a very long time indeed. In that time, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has covered the ground. He entered government in 1988, appointed by the now noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, as a junior Whip in the old Department of Trade and Industry. There, as I understand it, he met a very young researcher from the Conservative Research Department called David Cameron, a contact which has clearly stood him in very good stead.

Indeed, if my memory serves me correctly, when, after the inconclusive result of the 2010 general election, David Cameron entered a room full of journalists to make his,

“big, open and comprehensive offer”,

to the Liberal Democrats, slipping into the room beside him—the only person to do so—was the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. So when the Prime Minister yesterday said in response to the resignation of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that to him personally he had always been a,

“staunch friend and wise counsel”,

I suspect that was the heartfelt truth.

I am less confident about just how comfortable the noble Lord has been with the results of that big, open and comprehensive offer—that is, the coalition. When it was put to him on “Channel 4 News” last night that he had been reported as saying he despaired that the coalition had broken down in the House of Lords he didn’t quite knock the story down completely when he replied:

“I’m sure that at times … over the … last 18 months I might well have said that.”

Of course, one of the most difficult issues that he has had to deal with since coming into government, again in the coalition, has been House of Lords reform, and in particular the exciting and very well thought-through proposals from his now ex-Cabinet colleague, the Deputy Prime Minister. Tom Strathclyde is, of course, a natural House of Lords reformer. He has shown nothing but utter loyalty to the Government’s now-abandoned proposals for an all or mainly elected House of Lords. We on these Benches of course completely believed him, and saw no signs at all of one of the biggest political winks in parliamentary history. All I would report is the view of one Member of this House from his own Benches who said, this morning, about the noble Lord and Lords reform: “There were times when Tom’s tongue was so far in his cheek that it was almost coming out of his ear”. As another of the noble Lord’s colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, once so brilliantly put it: they might very well say that, but we on this side of the House could not possibly comment.

The noble Lord has had a long and highly distinguished political career. Indeed, he was Leader of the Opposition in your Lordships’ House for an astonishing 14 years, serving four leaders of his party in the Commons from 1998 to 2010 among the total of six Tory leaders he has served under. As Leader of the Opposition now, I both admire and am staggered by his tenacity, which was signalled very early on in his political career when in 1983 he bravely stood in the Conservative interest as an MEP candidate in Merseyside East. As natural a Scouser as he is a Lords reformer, sadly the noble Lord did not succeed on that occasion, although I am sure the European yearnings which that effort clearly showed will place him naturally in line with his mentor, the Prime Minister, when he makes his long-awaited speech on Europe.

Both as Leader of the Opposition and leader of his own party in Government, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has always been a highly capable political operator, a straight dealer and a man of his word. Even so there have been difficult times, of course, but it really cannot have been part of the coalition’s plan for this House, with the coalition’s huge inbuilt political majority, that we on these Benches and others would defeat the Government 59 times so far since May 2010. If on occasion this has led the noble Lord to be pretty robust in his dealings with the House, his own wit and charm, and sometimes pretty old-fashioned bluster, have more than got him through.

I would say that the noble Lord has always been personally warm and friendly to me in our private dealings, even when texting to inform me that the following day’s business has been pulled. I thank him now for his judgment, his trust, his confidences and his counsel. Among the most difficult times we have seen in recent years were the issues we faced over allowances and Peers’ conduct. As leaders throughout that difficult period, we both worked hard to make sure that there was not the slenderest of cigarette papers between us in the service of the House. He played a particularly important role at a decisive moment in getting the new allowances arrangements agreed.

It is true that some of the noble Lord’s strongest fans have not always been found among some of my colleagues on these Benches, especially when he has picked individuals up personally on points in the Chamber. However, politics can be a rough old trade and there can be no doubt that the noble Lord has served his beloved Conservative Party and, in his public duties, the people of this country well and loyally. In particular, I know that noble Lords will want it said that he has served this House well and loyally. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will be greatly missed and from these Benches we thank him for all he has done. We wish him well in his future life beyond Front-Bench politics and we look forward to his maintaining strong and deep connections with your Lordships’ House from a different perspective to his extraordinary contribution from the Front Bench during a quarter of a century of dedicated service.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, when Talleyrand died and Metternich received a telegram saying, “Talleyrand is dead”, he pondered and thought, “Now what does he mean by this?”. There has been something of a similar reaction to the resignation of my noble friend. After his 14 years as a leader in this House and 25 years on the Front Bench, our great media have had to speculate on why he is going. There was even an outrageous suggestion in some of the papers that he could no longer tolerate working with the Liberal Democrats. As my noble friends will confirm, there have been no more harmonious meetings than when Tom Strathclyde has come to give the Liberal Democrats one of his regular pep talks. Indeed, if he were so minded, I would be able to persuade two or three of my friends to make way for him here on our Benches.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, mentioned the name. What is in a name? Certainly not much for the William Hickey column of the Daily Express, which says that “Charlie Strathclyde” has departed as the leader. One would have thought that it would get the name right. I had to face—as the noble Baroness said—the annual humiliation at Prorogation when the clerk would read out Thomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Strathclyde and Tom McNally. At one time I thought of adding Plantagenet just to give it a bit of class.