House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brady of Altrincham, on his maiden speech. I will be very sad to lose my noble friend Lady Quin although, both as a Minister and as a private citizen, I have done my Newcastle visitor trips. I almost had a lump in my throat, as a former engineer before I came into Parliament, when I saw the first factory where a railway engine was built. It was an amazing operation.

I made my general views on reform clear in the November debate, so I will not go over those now, but the Bill is a clear manifesto commitment within the conventions. Everyone has quoted page 108 of the Labour manifesto, but I will start off with Conventions of the UK Parliament, the report of the Joint Committee of both Lords and Commons, which is still valid today. After that report was done in 2006, both Houses voted to support it. In its conclusions, in paragraph 99, it says:

“The Convention which has evolved is that: In the House of Lords: A manifesto Bill is accorded a Second Reading; A manifesto Bill is not subject to ‘wrecking amendments’ which change the Government’s … intention as proposed in the Bill”.


Any of the amendments about reforming the Lords that have been hinted at today would therefore be, in those terms, wrecking amendments because they change the Government’s proposal that was in their manifesto and its operation. My view is simple: both Houses need to agree the Bill and send it back, not get it mixed up with other matters.

This will be my negative bit for the Government, as I do not want to be a toady now that we are in government. The other bit that has been quoted a lot today, again on page 108, is the part about Labour being

“committed to replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber”.

That is quite distinct from the other promise, and it cannot operate as a commitment under the conventions. The words in the manifesto are vague; they are not at all specific and therefore it cannot be covered. I say to my Front Bench that, if that commitment is based on the report of the so-called commission headed by Gordon Brown, I will vote against it. I would not give an O-level to that report and the Labour Peer on the commission voted against it. To be clear about this, I sent the establishment’s House magazine a note on it in the summer, but I was not establishment enough to get it published. That report was all about Scotland. It was not about genuine reform of a revising second Chamber, but I will not go over that anymore.

The Bill has got to go back to the Commons without any amendment. That way, we can get down to putting pressure on the Government, because I want reform. The issues raised by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, were all positive ideas. We cannot carry on just as we are, but I have seen and heard of plans by some of my new colleagues who want to amend it to include the Bishops. That will be a big mistake. It is a fundamental change to the Bill. It would amount to a wrecking amendment, because it is not consistent with it, and it would take the Bill outside the conventions that I have just quoted. At some time in another Session—if I am still here, being over the age limit—I would vote to remove the clerics from lawmaking. I do not want more of them in here; they have a job outside, which is not making laws, although I would make an exception for the Bishop of Newcastle, who has proved to be a Bishop of substance.

G20 and COP 29 Summits

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

Targets are there to be attained and reached, and every effort is being made. The difference is that 2030 is the national target; 2035 is the international agreement reached at the summits. I hope that is helpful.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

While I applaud the Government’s policy of being civilised, nice and supportive of President-elect Trump because we have to work with him, will it be made abundantly clear, without qualification, that this country will not import hormone-treated beef or chlorinated washed chicken?

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

Is that an application to be ambassador?

House of Lords Reform

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, to seriously take note of Lords reform, we really need to be aware of our role and function. It is not to be the Executive’s little helpers but to hold them to account. As such, it is Commons reform that we need to look at. Having been there for 27 years, I am entitled to be a critical supporter. I was sent here not to undermine the elected House but to help with scrutiny and revision.

Our big mistake in 1997 was effectively to guillotine every Bill in the Commons. Okay, we called it timetabling, but it has exactly the same effect. Bills arrive here in the Lords not properly scrutinised by the elected House. I once suggested that all the Bills that arrive here should come with a Speaker’s certificate, pointing out what parts of the Bill had not been scrutinised, but I was told this was not practical when it was looked at. But it remains the case that we have to clean up the Commons’ failure to do its job properly, and it annoys those down there, who are ignorant about our function.

I always start sessions of the Peers in Schools programme—now Learn with the Lords—as I will do again in a couple of weeks, by saying that the Lords is, in effect, a large sub-committee of the Commons, with the role of asking it to think again. The elected House always has the last word, but we are the thinking Chamber, which thinks for itself rather than being told by the business managers what to think. We ask the Commons to think again and maybe again.

I think the Learn with the Lords programme needs to be extended from schools and colleges to Whitehall and the Commons. We need to confront the sheer ignorance—which I shared until I came here—in Whitehall and the Commons about our role and function. The obsession is always with composition and numbers. They are important but not the key event. I will never forget the day when, as a Minister, I went with my noble friend Lord Grocott, who was then the Government Chief Whip, to a senior Cabinet committee in charge of legislation. We were there merely to explain the rules and conventions here in the Lords. The chair of the committee wagged his finger at us and said, “You’ve gone native, you two”, based on his ignorance of what we were trying to explain. So far, that ex-Cabinet Minister has not arrived in your Lordships’ House. Ministers need the odd session, particularly if they have been only a Minister on the bridge, rather than, as I was, a Minister of State, always in the engine room. Those Cabinet Ministers who have never done any other jobs have not got a clue, and need to be better informed.

I am coming to the end now. We are not a threat, but we are here to stop the executive takeover of Parliament. Having served for nearly three years on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I know that the move continues bit by bit as the Executive take more power from Parliament for Ministers at the expense of scrutiny. There is no question but that—people on all sides have seen it—and it continues today. It has continued since the general election; that committee broke a precedent recently and summoned Ministers about an appalling Bill taking powers from Parliament. In my three years it never felt the need to summon Ministers, but it has since the last election.

Yes, we need to reduce our numbers, but kicking out the superactive noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and keeping the once-a-year Russian is not the sensible way to do it. I wait for a big defence of that from the Prime Minister. We should revisit the Commons and Lords Joint Committee on conventions of the UK Parliament. It was chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham, and its report was published in November 2006. After it was published, it was agreed by both Houses. If you are going to argue about changes in the conventions, both Houses have ownership. There should be a specific form of agreement. What better time to revisit it?

Human Rights Violations: Consular Assistance

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to create a legal right for British nationals to access consular assistance in cases of human rights violations.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)]

My Lords, our consular operation offers British nationals a 24/7, 365 days a year service. We welcome feedback to help improve our support to British nationals, including from those who use our services and other stakeholders. The Government are examining options on strengthening support for British nationals abroad, including a right to assistance in cases of human rights violations, as set out in our manifesto.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

In the meantime, will the Government issue a warning to academics and curious tourists not to visit Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and China as these are locking people up and denying them consular access. Is the Minister aware that Australia, the United States and Ireland— I repeat, Ireland—have secured the release of citizens from the Chinese Communist Party prisons by taking a tough line on trade? Yet our Foreign Secretary went off to China with no trade demands—and not even having met Jimmy Lai’s legal team here in the UK—and came back empty-handed. Jimmy Lai, a British citizen, has been locked in solitary for four years and denied medical treatment. Why can the UK not take the same tough line as Ireland?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend, but I think he knows very well just how seriously we take Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment. He will recall my questions to the previous Government on this. He will recall my statements on this, where we have taken a very strong position. Let me reassure my noble friend: the idea that the Foreign Secretary goes to China and does not raise these issues is ridiculous. I assure him that the Foreign Secretary said in his response to the Oral Question on Monday that it was because he had been out of the country visiting a wide range of countries he had not at that stage been able to meet the family of Jimmy Lai. But Catherine West has and will continue to do so and the Foreign Secretary said he would do so. I reassure my noble friend that we take this very seriously and will raise it at all levels.